Monday, 14 December 2015

All these years,
we have been preaching about empowering our women and saving the girl child
from the clutches of gender inequality. But in reality, have we succeeded in
reaching our goal?

It’s a reality- we
need lots of improvement in several areas including education for girls and
nutrition.

It is disturbing
to know that still many families prefer boys over girls. Birth of a boy is
considered as a blessing, while a girl child is often ignored. Many parents
still hesitate to send their girl children to school and marry them off at an
early age.

As per the
Census in the year 2011, India has only 940 females for every 1000 males. Female literacy rates have improved over the
past 25 years. However, we still have long way to go to match the male literacy
rate. Only 65.46% of our females, according to the Census in 2011, were
literate compared to 80% of males.

Similarly,
undernutrition affects females more than males in India. According to a UNICEF
report, 36% of Indian women part of the NFHS-3 (National Health Survey) was
chronically undernourished and 55 % were anaemic. About 68 % of girl children from Bihar and Madhya
Pradesh in the NFHS-3 were malnourished.

We already have several
schemes to help improve lives of girl children in India, including the two
programmes the Government launched in January this year: ‘Beti bachao, beti
padhao’ and ‘Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana (SSY).’ Other
schemes introduced for the welfare of our female population include ‘Nutrition
programme for adolescent girls,’ and ‘The Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Empowerment
of Adolescent Girls (RGSEAG) – Sabla.’

Like the
Government, efforts by some NGOs like The Akshaya Patra Foundationhave also given
rays of hope in women and girl children across India.

Akshaya Patra’s nutritious
mid-day meals have helped numerous girl
children back to school.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation has also given employment opportunities to rural women. The
organisation’s decentralised kitchens are mainly run by Women Self-Help Groups (SHGs),
mainly by mothers of children who are studying in the organisation’s
beneficiary schools. The employment at Akshaya
Patra, no doubt, has given some kind of financial independence to these
mothers.

It does seem days are getting better for the
girl child, but our commitment to bridge the gap needs to be stronger and
actions to bring changes much faster and then we can really see a nation where
girls stand shoulder to shoulder with the boys very soon.